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On Guard Luke 21:25 – 36; Jeremiah 33:14 – 16 We knew the winter storm was coming. We had heard for a couple of days that the onslaught of this weather would hit Kansas City and then whip across the state. Detailed down to the hour and type of precipitation by the weather forecasters was carried by all major news stations. Were we more ready because of the warnings? Sure! Were we absolutely prepared? No. But we live in an age when there are so many more technical resources to help prepare us — help us be on guard. Recently a tsunami alert went out to Japan after an earthquake. Tthis alert certainly came because of the lack of such warning for the devastating tsunami two years ago. Each disaster allows us to learn and be more alert. We are all now accustomed to the value of individual medical alert systems: mammograms, colonoscopies, heart caths, stress tests, echo cardiograms, sonograms, glaucoma eye pressure exams. All of these scientific advances have been wonderful to keep us on guard for natural and medical disasters. Our grandparents and great grandparents had no such possibilities. Farmers and outdoors-folk have varying sensibilities about impending weather changes, but nothing to compare with the wonders of our alert systems today. What about Jesus’ alerts? How seriously do we take Jesus’ words of warning about the end times? The people 2000 years ago evidently did. They were waiting and getting ready for major world changes – for the end of time as they knew it. But it didn’t come. Throughout the centuries there have been various times when cadres of believers are standing on guard for the end times. Street corner soap-box preachers can still be found in some cities citing the doom that awaits and the preparedness that is required. Since the end didn’t come, and since there have been so many, many years in the interim, what is the point of these on guard scriptures? Are they relevant at all?! Or perhaps we should ask: what is the threat to which they are warning? Advent is the season (we begin this morning) set aside by church leaders to help focus us on preparedness. It is the time we are to consider being ‘on guard’ for what we normally let pass by us. It is a group of days when we are called to think about how we will receive: receive God’s presence, receive God’s call, receive God’s amazing truths, receive God’s desires for our lives, and receive a deeper faith. So what’s the threat in all that. Why wouldn’t we want that, and why do we have to get ready for it all? Most of us clean our homes – or at least straighten the clutter when we know that visitors will be coming. Although dress codes certainly are not what they used to be, most of us still get cleaned up for special events. And when we are going to meet someone that might have some influence in our community or our workplace, we usually don a particular type of behavior that is called ‘best.’ Why? Are we trying to fool our company, the people at special events, or the influential ones into thinking we are someone we truly are not? Or are we merely trying to bring out what is already within us, but just hiding in some secret zones? The problem with not having company, or attending special events or being available for the meeting of influential people is that we get lazy and slovenly and forget about the ‘best’ that lives and hides within us much of the time. Jesus’ warning was precisely about that kind of living. He was concerned that the people of the world were getting too accustomed to living in such a way that they would forget how to meet God, how to be in the holy presence, how to reveal their very, very best to the author of creation and the redeemer of life AND each other! People had cluttered their lives with too many other distractions — they had avoided the discipline of searching for truth…forgotten how to act with compassion…turned away from hearing the needs and pains of others… had not been practicing allowing resources given to them to flow to others…neglected praying for strength…avoided asking for help to approach the dilemmas of life…turned their hearts so cold that no one else could get in. Jesus warned his hearers that they were not ready to truly receive him — as the presence of God — that they were not prepared. Jesus warned his hearers that they had not heeded the alerts…the warnings…that they were not on guard for a relationship that could change their independent, determined, chaotic lives merely by them asking and inviting God in. Jesus’ listeners — his hearers — were obviously hungry to heed his warnings. They did flock around him and seemed eager to respond in spite of the fact that the religious leaders of the time warned against Jesus. People who come into congregations today are also hungry. No longer is there any mass social custom of attending church on Sunday mornings. So we gather because we are seeking something — some way to respond to God’s invitation. What Jesus was saying to those listeners then, and what the words of Christ can say to us today, is that IF we really want to be ready for the meeting — the time when Jesus Christ stands in our space and sees right through our hearts and souls and lives — there are some pieces of uncluttering we need to care for. It is not a disaster — medical or natural — that awaits us, but a mighty powerful experience of being face-to-face with the God who knows us through and through and loves us beyond all imagination and has a vision of what we could do with our lives – if only we take time to stop to listen and receive. Advent is just that time. Now, we are enmeshed in a culture that works against that possibility. There isn’t a more hectic time than these weeks preceding Christmas — there is more food to eat, more drinks to be shared, more parties to attend, more music to hear, more gifts to buy, more decorations to put up, more to see, hear and be involved in. All of which is exactly why Jesus asks us to be alert – now – praying that we will have the strength to get beneath all these things and ready ourselves to receive the real gift of life. Receive that which will then allow us to be the gift God needs us to be in this world. For the church to truly be the body of Christ in this world…to be effective agents of reconciliation…to be responsive to the needs of aching cultures, we must first of all be the ones we are called to be. We must first of all be ready to face our God and receive what God has for us — to feed on the riches, the gifts that have been prepared. Come, dear Christians, be on guard, be alert, get prepared — the gift is being wrapped, and we must be ready to receive. SW |
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